


And With Strange Aeons

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Brainwashing, Dark, Death, Gen, Horror, Lovecraftian, Mindfuck, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-25
Updated: 2011-01-25
Packaged: 2017-10-15 01:42:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...</p><p>let's</p><p>be</p><p>tanglebuddies</p><p>:D</p>
            </blockquote>





	And With Strange Aeons

At first, there is a rainbow of colors and light, and she soars through it. For a moment, she thinks she’s become a rainbow drinker at last. Is this not what the first bite is like as the poison enters one’s veins, as one’s blood changes from its natural color to the chameleonic fluid which fills the undead?

She falls and she flies and she revels in the colors, and then somehow Tavros is there, and he takes her hand and she finds she cannot be angry with him any longer. And then Feferi comes and she is quite far across a rainbow river, and she beckons them both, smiling brightly.

“Come on!”

She and Tavros (who has his old legs back, and a pair of bright dragonfly wings; he wears bright blue and you’ve never seen him so dashing) run across, lights sparking in your wake, laughing all the while.

She reaches Feferi, her arms open to embrace her, and that’s when everything goes black.

* * *

Her eyes have always been bad. Unlike the others of her race, she sees best in bright light. To her, this darkness is blinding, all consuming.

Tavros, however, is screaming.

“Tavros,” she asks, “Tavros, please, what’s going on?”

She cannot stand, and she realizes that this is because she is floating. She blinks, trying to see through the blackness, and finally there is just enough eerie green light that she can make out shapes.

Horrible shapes.

She claps a hand over her mouth.

“Oh, not you too, Kan!” says Feferi, floating out of the darkness. “Both of you, I mean, really! I know you’re Prospit dreamers and all, but really, you shouldn’t be so afraid!”

Feferi turns back to face the things, and one drifts closer, its tentacles descending and slinking around her.

“Mother, we’re here! I’m sorry we all took so long! I missed you so much... but now we can be real friends, right? I don’t have to feed you any more!”

Tavros stops screaming, but not because he’s not afraid - his voice has gone so hoarse that he cannot do it anymore. Instead, he starts to cry, and instinctively Kanaya wraps her arms around him.

“Feferi, what’s happening?” she demands at last. ““ What happened?”

Feferi floats back over, spinning a little.

“We’re dead, silly! And soon everyone else will be too, and we won’t have to worry about the game anymore! Or anything at all~ Because soon, we’re all going to be tangle buddies!”

“... what.”

Feferi takes Kanaya’s hands in her own, her grin growing wider and wider. “You need to listen more closely when they sing, Kanaya. They’ll start soon. They all tell stories. You don’t get to hear the stories when you’re just a dreamer and you never heard them on Prospit anyway but when your dreamself dies you can hear all the stories if you listen! But while you’re alive you can’t understand them, it just sounds like glubbing,” she giggled. “But when you die, oh, then you can understand all of it! I can’t wait to hear everything. And then when they’re done telling us stories, they’re going to be tangle buddies with us all!”

“I, uhh,I don’t want to be tangle buddies, Fef,” says Tavros, his eyes wide with terror. “I uh, really, um, don’t think that’s going to be fun. Can we just, uhh, go home now?”

“Oh, Tavros, weren’t you listening? We’re dead! We can’t go home until after we’re tangle buddies~”

Kanaya opens her mouth to ask, _Wait, go home after-_ but then the singing begins. Kanaya covers her ears and tries not to scream, but it’s so loud and so horrible and then the song is inside her and -

 _I once stood as a child on the edge of a crystal desert and sunlight flew through my veins; the game we played on light refracted through glass and then the meteors came and all my family died; I fought in their name, killing thousands to reach the Black King only to be struck down by my own brother in our moment of greatest need..._

 **Damn the game! Damn it for killing all bonds of kinship, all thought of love!**

 _I swam beneath ice and sang deep songs with my sisters, and we never knew the stars or other worlds at all, for none had ever drilled through the sky to the beyond; but then we took the stone disks and spun them in the deeps and the sky broke and we saw through it the stars; I tried to make a deal with the Black Queen but it all went wrong..._

 **Damn the game! Damn it for its tricks and lies, for a test with no hint and no solution, for the unsolvable riddle!**

 _We worked together always in our hives and we played the game to the best of our ability; as hivemates we sang together; he died in my arms when we failed to kill the Black King and I could not bear to live without him..._

 **Damn the game for the death of love!**

 _I lived on a cold world where the ground was ice and the rivers were methane... I died in the veil in a dead session, lost and alone..._

 **Damn the game!**

 _I lived in a world with no ground where the winds howled and tumbled... I died crushed by stone deep beneath the earth..._

 **DAMN THE GAME!**

Kanaya covers her ears and Tavros covers his and they scream but the song fills their bones. Kanaya shouts into the voices,

“No! No, it doesn’t matter that we’ve died! The game is an act of creation! I have heard the Vast Croak, I have seen the birth of a new universe! Why do you say these hateful things!?”

 _Why must billions die for a new universe to be born?_

 _Why must our worlds die every time?_

 _Why must we be the sacrifice? What of our pain?_

Damn the game! **DAMN THE GAME!**

Tears stream down her face now and she shakes her head. No, no, no, not this, it cannot be all for nothing. Feferi, though, sings along, chanting with them, her face wide with glee. She opens her arms and walks to the nearest one.

“I was born a princess of a vicious race; I was going to teach them all to love; I was to bring kindness and grace to them all and to bring to the world a new dawn! I would unite land and sea, and all would be beautiful!”

“And I was killed because I dared defend my true love! Killed by one who had taken a weapon from the game! By one who would have been too weak, if not for the game! My world will never see redemption, because of th -”

She stops mid sentence as she starts giggling uncontrollably. She laughsstill louder and her laughs turn bubbly as blood wells in her mouth, and then the changes start.

Her skin stretches and bulges as tentacles burst from within, as her body reshapes itself and her eyes turn white and then divide and multiply. And still she laughs, and then she sings, her voice now a screech as she sings that finally she’s just like you, mother, just like you as her mouth turns beaklike and chitinous, as she grows still larger, and then other tentacles reach out and tangle with her own, slipping around her and through her until it is impossible to tell any longer which one used to be Feferi and which are the others. And she sings, and she sings, and she screams curses at the game and she sings other songs too, singing cautions to the players, shifting between telling them how to win and telling them that it’s okay to lose too, then they can be tangle buddies tangle buddies _tangle buddies_

Kanaya screams and cries but as she does she hears Tavros stand up and begin to speak.

“I, uhh... my life always sucked, actually, uhh... I tried to play games but the pirate with one eye and the hook broke my spine, uhh, because she, uhh, thought it was funny... and then the game let me fly and walk again in my dreams and I liked that! But, uhh.. then she tried to make me kill her and I didn’t want to, and uhh, then I couldn’t even dream anymore, and then when I tried to make her pay because she’s a bad person she just, uhh, killed me. And I kept... I kept trying! I kept trying to do the right thing, and I kept _trying_ to be confidant and to be somebody that isn’t so weak and I can’t and I couldn’t and I just don’t want to even be me anymore, please just take me away so I can stop... ”

Kanaya watches as he, too, is tangled and torn, and his song becomes softer and then he stops altogether, content merely to sleep.

“No. I refuse. I still believe in the art of creation. I still _believe_ that the end is not yet written, that there can be an ending worth having, that it all has meaning, she says, tears in her eyes as she stares at what used to be her friends. She can, however, already feel it begin, feel a twisting and a burbling inside her. She puts a hand on her stomach, doubling over as she speaks. “ I am a daughter of the sun, in all ways; and a daughter of the sun I shall remain.”

 _But you have no choice. You are dead, daughter of the sun. And so, too, will the sun die. Soon enough. Soon enough._

A slick tentacle bursts through the flesh of her stomach, wiggling and seeking its brothers. She winces, and coughs blood.

“I am a daughter of the sun! I am a keeper of trees and a dreamer of light; I am the Sylph of Space, bringer of... bringer of life...”

The tentacles rip through her skin, and reach for the others, brown and violet, and she still protests but it is a song, now a song that repeats again and again on how she wants to walk in light she wants the sun she misses the sun why did they take it from her? Why is it all taken from her? Whatever happened to it all... _oh father, where did you go, I can hear you in the light here but all is shadow and singing from a thousand doomed souls_

Their tentacles twist and twist and...

* * *

Karkat stands in the lab, staring at the screen.

Don’t take your eyes off the body.

But he already has. He turns back around.

Kanaya and Feferi stand, swaying back and forth on their feet, their backs bent, their eyes hollow.

“Oh fuck! Oh fuck, no no, Kan, Fef, fuck, please jegus don’t be - ”

They open their mouths and out comes a keening screech, a horrifying sound that he remembers from his dreams after his dreamself died. He even remembers those particular ones and now as they advance, he thinks he can almost understand them.

 _We missed you, Karkat. Come with us..._


End file.
